Our next ‘jewish invention’ myth is the claim that jews first created the legal concept of the presumption of innocence.
Debbie Lechtman claims as follows:
‘PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE
The presumption of innocence is a principle in law that every person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty.
It was the Talmud — the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the main source of Halacha [Jewish Law] — that repeatedly emphasized that the burden of evidence rests on the accuser, not the accused, such as in Bava Kamma 46b.
The Jerusalem Talmud was completed in the fifth century and the Babylonian Talmud was completed in the sixth century.
Equality before the law was also an ancient Israelite idea. The Israelites were the first not to assign their kings divine rights; in other words, Israelites did not believe that their kings ruled in the name of God. As such, kings, too, had to obey the Ten Commandments and the other laws outlined in the Torah. In other words: the kings were not above the law.
In the Torah, Leviticus argues that all should be treated equally before the law: “You shall not commit a perversion of justice; you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the great; with righteousness shall you judge your fellow.”’ (1)
The problem is that this is complete cobblers and the first formally codified presumption of innocence in law was introduced into Roman law by Emperor Antonius Pius sometime between 138 to 161 A.D.
As John Bagnell Bury explains:
‘In criminal law, Antoninus introduced the important principle, which, though now universally recognised in theory, is not always respected in practice, that accused persons are not to be treated as guilty before trial.’ (2)
And even before Antonius Pius; the famous Babylonian ‘Code of Hammurabi’ (c. 1775 B.C.) contained an early rendition of the presumption of innocence which states:
‘If anyone bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.’ (3)
It is from these sources that Leviticus and the rabbis of the Talmud almost certainly took their ideas that now Lechtman is trying to claim were ‘jewish inventions’ all along.
So no, the presumption of innocence was not first created/innovated by jews.
References
(1) https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/israelite-jewish-inventions-during-ancient-times
(2) John Bagnall Bury, 1893, ‘A History of the Roman Empire from its Foundation to the Death of Marcus Aurelius (27 B.C.-180 A.D.)’, 1st Edition, Harper: New York, p. 527
(3) https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp; this interpretation is supported by https://www.pumphreylawfirm.com/blog/innocent-until-proven-guilty-the-history-and-current-application-of-the-presumption-of-innocence/
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